


unspoken rules

by skuls



Series: X Files Rewatch Series [2]
Category: The X-Files
Genre: AU, Episode: s01e01 Pilot, Episode: s01e03 Squeeze, Episode: s01e05 The Jersey Devil, Episode: s01e08 Ice, Episode: s01e13 Beyond the Sea, F/M, Lots of kissing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-05
Updated: 2018-04-05
Packaged: 2019-04-18 14:47:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,977
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14215476
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/skuls/pseuds/skuls
Summary: Five times Mulder and Scully kissed and never talked about it, and one time they didn’t.





	unspoken rules

**Author's Note:**

> mostly inspired by these headcanons: https://how-i-met-your-mulder.tumblr.com/post/161672233388/25-41-for-the-x-files-questions. a portion towards the end is taken from the progression and regression of first names.

**i.**

“Scully!” Mulder’s voice echoes through the woods, shouting her last name.

Dana blinks the spots from the light out of her eyes as she runs towards the sound, skidding down the small embankment and nearly colliding with him. “Mulder!” she gasps, and somehow her hand has ended up on his chest, how the hell did that happen? “What happened? There was a light,” she continues dumbly, overwhelmed with everything that's happened, everything that's transpired in these past few minutes.

“It was incredible,” he says. His hand is on her arm and they're both breathing hard; his eyes slip closed briefly before he raises his chin to look at her. He looks like he just found the Holy Grail, eyes full of eagerness and wonder. His heart is thudding like a rabbit under her palm. “This is it, Scully, this is proof!” he says, the beginnings of a smile giving way, tugging at the corners of his mouth until he's full on grinning. “They can't take this away from us, I saw it, there are witnesses. We found it!”

She smiles too, nearly laughing, giving it to the giddiness she'd felt in the graveyard, and nearly before she knows what is happening, his mouth is colliding with hers, their noses bumping together awkwardly, their teeth clicking. He's kissing her with a degree of eagerness that suggests that it mostly has to do with his excitement over the case, but she surprises herself by finding she doesn't care; she kisses back hard, her hand balling up the front of his shirt.

It only lasts a few seconds, she thinks, because then Mulder is pulling away. “Scully…” he starts uncertainly, his hand still cupping her elbow. Her hand is still against his chest. They don't move for a moment, still breathing hard, standing together in the clearing.

“Agents!” Detective Miles shouts from the clearing, making them both jump and look towards the direction Mulder came from. “Can we get my boy to the hospital?” he calls in the annoyed voice that reeks of self-appointed superiority.

They turn back to each other. She hadn't realized that Mulder was standing so close, leaning down to talk to her, but their noses brush as their heads turn. “We should go,” Scully says, determined to still be a little professional. Despite the ordeal in Mulder's hotel room and everything that happened just now, she is going to remain calm and professional.

“Yeah.” Mulder lets go of her elbow, she takes her hand off his chest, and they walk together towards the clearing Mulder came from.

“The girl should probably go see a doctor as well,” Detective Miles adds, still shouting in that same demanding voice.

“So helpful, that Detective Miles,” Mulder says, not without humor, and Dana chuffs out laughter, brushing damp hair behind her ears. “Do you want to…”

“I'll help Theresa,” she says.

“Okay.” Mulder pats her shoulder before heading for Billy and his father. Dana blinks rapidly when she sees Billy standing, talking to his father in a low voice. She ignores it for the moment, kneeling beside Theresa on the ground.

Detective Miles calls an ambulance and stands at the edge of the woods arguing with his son about whether or not he really _needs_ an ambulance. Dana stands beside Theresa, making sure she doesn't need anything. Mulder stands apart from the rest of them, pacing on the phone, motioning wildly as he talks. He meets her eyes and offers a small smile. She smiles back, unable to help herself. Even though she has been telling herself that this is a bad idea from the beginning, she does not need another relationship within the FBI, she does not need to fuck up her partnership like this. She wonders if this happened because she showed up in Mulder’s room in her underwear.

The ambulance comes for the two kids, Detective Miles gets into his police car, and Scully follows Mulder back to where they parked their car. She clears her throat awkwardly as they climb in. “Do you want to go to the hospital?” she asks.

“I'd like to see the results of whatever tests they run on Billy,” Mulder says, his fingers drumming at the steering wheel. “You could go back to the hotel and get some sleep, if you want. It's been a long couple days.”

“I'm fine,” she says, shaking her head firmly. She is not going to let this scare her away, and she is definitely not going back to the hotel to sleep while he goes to work more on the case.

Mulder starts the car in lieu of an answer. She swallows and stares straight ahead. She's forming excuses in her mind for whenever he brings up the kiss—she just got out of a relationship, she doesn't want to ruin this partnership before it starts, they barely know each other, it's a bad idea—but he doesn't. He doesn't bring it up in the car ride to the hospital or at the hospital or when they finally go back to the hotel. And not in the following weeks, either.

Scully is just as happy as he is to forget it. _It's a bad idea,_ she tells herself every time it pops up in the back of her mind. And it is. Hooking up with someone in the FBI has only led to trouble before. She has no intention to do it again. She is going to be smarter than that this time.

But goddamnit if she doesn't find herself thinking about those few seconds out in the woods where his mouth was on hers every once in a while. Especially on lonely nights.

  


**ii.**

The police show up at Scully's apartment to unattach Tooms from her bathtub. He's gone subdued since Mulder called the police, and Mulder can't help but wonder what kind of game he is playing. The Good Compliant Little Mutant Game in an attempt to get free again? He doesn't want to think about it.

Scully stands to the side, answering questions, her arms crossed over her chest. Tom Colton, that fucking prick, comes storming in demanding to know why Tooms has been arrested, and Scully responds with a ferocity that he can't help but find impressive. She tells him that their suspect broke into her apartment and that it never would have happened if he hadn't called off the stakeout. She tells him that their investigation—with the _right_ theory and the _right_ suspect—had no interference on his, and if he hadn't feel the need to stole his ego, that she could be enjoying a Friday night in her apartment instead of having to clean up a crime scene. She tears him down in a way that Mulder finds incredibly satisfying, and he can't help but smile to himself a little as he crawls around Scully's bathroom, looking for things to convict Tooms with, more proof for his theory. He got lucky in terms of partners; she's skeptical as hell, but she's crazy loyal and determined. He should be more careful with her. He's glad he got here on time.

Scully kicks Tom out of her apartment, and is in turned shooed out by the cops. “We need to clear the crime scene, and it'll be easier to do without you around, miss,” says the officer, and Scully scowls in a way that lets everyone know her opinion both on being kicked out and being called _miss_.

Mulder puts a hand on Scully's arm. “Agent Scully and I can make ourselves scarce for the time being,” he says, putting extra emphasis on the _Agent._ Scully's arm muscles are tense under his palm. “And you'll call me if you need any more information on the suspect. You have everything I've already told you?”

“Sure, we have that the suspect is a… mutant who can contort his body and enter through the air ducts,” the cop says in a dry tone that gives off disbelief, and that Mulder is all too used to hearing on this case.

“Good,” Scully says in an icy tone. “Then you'll contact us if you need any more clarification. And you'll be out of my apartment by midnight.”

The cop scratches at his neck with his pencil. “Sure.”

Scully nods, her face stony, shakes off Mulder’s hand and walks out of her apartment, spine straight. Mulder trails after her, caught somewhere between impressed and cautious. He doesn't want to push Scully too far, especially after she was almost killed in her apartment.

Outside in the hall, Scully covers her face with her hands and groans with frustration. “You okay?” Mulder asks.

She wipes her mouth irritably. “Mulder, there are about ten people I want to smack in the face,” she says. “And that isn't counting the mutant that broke into my bathroom and almost killed me. I'd like to put a bullet through his head, actually.”

He leans against the wall, crossing his arms over his chest. “Did I make your list?”

“What?” she asks tiredly.

“Your hit list. Do I qualify?”

“Oh.” She rubs her eyes, working her jaw back and forth wearily. “No, Mulder, not you. You're the one who solved the case, remember? And you got more shit than I did.”

“I didn't almost get killed,” he says, surprisingly sincere for him. He's surprising himself with this new partner of his all the time. “And I couldn't have solved this case without you. You're the one who had my back.”

Scully rubs her eyes again, lets her hands drop to her side. Her gold cross glints around her neck, and Mulder finds himself glad that Tooms didn't take that; he's liked that necklace, or at least has been intrigued by it, since the first time he saw it, on their first case. “Yes, I suppose so,” she says.

Mulder hunches his shoulders up, watching his partner. She's got her sleeves rolled up around her wrists, her makeup wiped off so that he can see her freckles. “Want me to drive you somewhere, Scully?” he asks. “To a friend's or something so you can get some sleep?”

She shakes her head. “I'll be fine,” she says. “Actually, I'll probably go to a restaurant. I haven't eaten; I was going to order something in after I took my bath.” Her cheeks pink a little at that.

Mulder thinks of the place where he's had more than one late night meal on a case. “Want to go together?” he asks, almost without thinking.

Her head snaps up in surprise. “What?”

“C’mon, I know the perfect place,” he says.

Scully's eyes dart back and forth from the door of her apartment to him. “Okay,” she says. “Sure.”

\---

He takes her to the tiny 24-hour diner that he frequents all too often in downtown DC. Well, she drives herself, but she follows him over there.

The whole thing is painted a bright blue that makes Mulder feel like he's hallucinating, and the place smells like syrup. Scully wrinkles her nose at the cloyingly sweet scent, and he nudges her shoulder. “Best pancakes in the world, Scully, right here,” he says. “I'm considering opening an X-File to find out why they're so damn good.”

“Mmm,” Scully hums, taking her seat across from him and picking up her laminated menu. “That's impossible, Mulder.”

He sighs wearily in a way that makes one corner of her mouth turn up. “Of course you'd say that,” he says dramatically. “So what's your alternate theory, Scully? There are too many pancakes in the world for these to be the best?”

“Maybe.” She's really smiling at him now, looking down at the desk, her hair hiding half of her face. “Maybe it's because I've _had_ the best pancakes in the world, and it wasn't here.”

“Let me guess. Pancake House?”

“Maybe.” She turns the menu over in her hand casually. “Maybe it was my roommate in college. Best pancakes I've ever tasted.”

Mulder sighs haughtily. “See, Scully, you've not had nearly enough experience with the art of pancakes. I, however, have had enough experience with pancakes all over the country, and _these_ are the best.”

Scully giggles quietly, pushing the sugar holders around. He smiles, too, unable to help it. After days of discussing only liver extraction and serial murders, it's nice to be doing something mindlessly.

The waitress comes to take their drink order. He orders coffee. Scully orders a soda. They both order pancakes, and Scully raises her eyebrows innocently when Mulder looks at her. “It's important to conduct a full investigation, Mulder,” she says mildly. He laughs.

The tabletop is sticky with syrup, and Mulder finds his hands sticking to it while they're talking. Scully spends about seven minutes complaining about Colton. “I guess I saw some of his competitive side at the Academy, but I had _no idea_ …” she says, taking a long drink of soda. “I mean, I couldn't believe the way he…”

“Scully, it's okay,” he says, slightly amused. The taste of coffee is bitter in his mouth. He dumps another two Sweet n Lows in the mug and stirs them in. “I'm used to being sidelined like that, I get it all the time. I thought you'd be more upset about the way they treated you.”

“It's not about that,” she says, frustrated. “This is my assignment, and they should respect that. Besides that, there was substance to your theory, actual evidence, and they just _dismissed_ it.”

“Better get used to that if you want to work with me.”

She swallows irritably. The waitress comes, setting the plates of pancakes down in front of them. They reach for the syrup at the same time, their fingers brushing.

“Well… at least I asked you on the case,” Scully says finally. “Because of you, Tooms is off the streets forever.”

“Because of _us_ ,” Mulder says firmly. He's got a good partner. He's willing to admit it. “We caught him together. You're the one who handcuffed him, remember?”

“Yes,” she says softly. “I suppose we did.”

They don't speak a lot for the rest of the meal. When the waitress comes back to take their plates away, Mulder raises his eyebrows at Scully and asks, “So what did you think?”

She licks her lips and he shivers a little. He's suddenly thinking of that kiss in the forest and he doesn't know why. “Decent pancakes,” she says. “But I don't have enough conclusive evidence to come to a final conclusion.”

He grins, reaches out to snag her necklace on the tip of his finger. Her cross is shorter than the necklace Tooms took, so his finger lands in the hollow of her collarbone. She swallows, her pale throat working, and doesn't look at him. This necklace is too short to snag anyway, so he pulls his hand away.

They walk outside together, standing on the sidewalk between their cars. “I guess I'll see you at work tomorrow, Scully,” he says in an attempt at a goodbye.

“Guess so,” Scully says.

Quickly, as if on impulse, she leans forward at the same moment that he turns his head towards her, and her lips land briefly on his. She pulls back so fast that he feels slightly embarrassed, her face so red that the freckles across her nose have almost completely disappeared, her eyes shifting to the ground. “Um, thanks,” she murmurs. “For the pancakes. And, uh, for saving my life.” She's avoiding his eyes.

He can feel where her lipstick is smeared across his bottom lip; he guesses that she must have been going for his cheek. “Anytime,” he says softly. He's thinking of the kiss in the forest, an impulse move that he never brought up afterwards. He'd been too scared to tell her that it was a bad idea and he wanted to just be friends. At the time, he had. But now… now, his mouth is still buzzing with the brief heat of hers.

Just how badly had he fucked up by kissing her? He'd certainly felt like an idiot afterwards, but Scully's reaction to an accidental occurrence of their lips occupying the same space would suggest pretty bad.

She still won't look at him, her face as red as it was the first time he kissed her. “Goodnight, Mulder,” she says quietly.

“Goodnight, Scully,” he says, turning back towards where he parked.

In the car, he grips the wheel with a surprised daze. He would blame himself for trying to be companionable with his partner, giving her the wrong idea, but she'd looked as embarrassed as him. He thinks Scully doesn't want anything romantic to happen between them just as much as he does. He thinks it's a bit of a relief. If they can avoid incidents like these again, then they should be just fine.

He ignores the warmth of Scully's mouth lingering on his, grips the wheel, and turns his mind to Tooms. With their luck, he won't actually ever be convicted. They'll find some reason to cut him loose, some reason to put him back on the streets. They'll need to be ready when it inevitably happens.

  


**iii.**

A week after the beast woman dies, Mulder is not able to forget the whole ordeal. This is in part due to the scratches she left on his chest, deep cuts that are tightly bandaged and have been healing over in the past few days. But it's mostly due to his overall fascination with the case. The implications of it all… when Scully delivers the autopsy results, he's overwhelmed with eagerness at the way it all comes together. He heads out to meet with the ethnobiologist, and Scully ditches a date to go with him (or at least so he thinks). Not a bad day, he notes to himself, even if the conclusion of the case was less than satisfying. He's still finding himself unexpectedly enjoying time with Scully. All the driving back and forth to Atlantic City is good for bonding, he guesses. He felt a little bad about pulling her away from her date last week, but she didn't seem angry about it. She seemed a little relieved, even, when he picked her up from the restaurant. Part of him can't help but wonder why she's ditching this guy in order to chase after monsters with her crackpot partner.

He asks her about it when they're walking out of the Smithsonian together. “Why won't you be having dinner with your guy again?”

“What?” she asks, caught off guard before it clicks together. “Oh… I told you, Mulder. No interest at this time.”

“It's not because I pulled you away from your date last week?”

Scully laughs a little, tucking hair behind her ear. “No, Mulder, it has nothing to do with you. If you want to know the truth, I thought he was boring, and he’s in a different place in his life than I am. So I had no interest in going out with him again.” She shrugs.

“Oh.” He buries his hands in his pockets, looking at Scully from the side, raising an eyebrow at her.

She laughs a little louder, shrugging underneath the large coat she's wearing. “Why do you care, Mulder?” she asks. “You were the one who asked me to cancel the date in the first place, remember?”

“And you said you wanted to have a life,” he reminds her.

“And _you_ said that you did,” she reminds him.

He turns towards her, her chin lifting as she looks up at him. “I think I'm going to take your suggestion and go get a beer,” he says. “Enjoy this life of mine. Want to come along? I'm buying.”

“Sure,” Scully says with some surprise. “Why not? Sounds like fun.”

\---

They accidentally get drunk.

Or, well, it's probably not an accident. They just keep ordering drinks. Scully laughs louder after a few drinks, her cheeks pink. Her smile is blinding. Mulder feels a stunned affection towards her that part of him hates. He wasn't supposed to feel this way about his new partner.

Mulder cracks the shell of a peanut between his teeth like a makeshift sunflower seed. Scully licks the salt from a peanut off of the tip of her finger. “So,” she says, taking a long sip from her glass. “So, have you ever had a case with the real Jersey Devil, Mulder?”

“That _was_ the real Jersey Devil,” Mulder says petulantly, rolling a straw wrapper between his fingers. “You _saw_ it, Scully.”

“That was not a Jersey Devil,” Scully says. “That was a cannibalistic woman who was cut off from civilization. Perfectly explainable by science, although initially improbable. The real Jersey Devil is… is _not_ real.” She wrinkles her nose in confusion.

“That is a paradox, Scully,” Mulder says, draining his glass. “You cannot be real _and_ not real.” He notes her empty glass and offers, “Another drink?”

She shakes her head. “I'm going to have to take a cab home, Mulder,” she says sadly. “We both will. One of us should have not drank.”

“Where's the fun in that?” he asks, drumming his fingers on the table. She makes a face at him that makes him chuckle. “And the Jersey Devil _is_ real,” he adds.

“It is not!” She pokes the table hard with her finger. “It is not. I'll give you the Jane Doe, that was real, she was, uh, a cave woman person. But the Jersey Devil is a _myth_ , Mulder.”

“Myths are based in fact, real stories that people told, a-and experienced, don't you know that, Scully?”

“Myth,” she says stubbornly. He blows a straw wrapper at her and she balls up a napkin and lugs it at him. But she is giggling. He smiles, too.

When they leave the bar, the sky is choked with clouds, the scent of rain in the air. They stand together on the sidewalk, looking together for a cab, when Scully turns towards him and places a hand on his chest, directly over the bandaged wounds. “How are you healing?” she asks.

They're standing under a streetlamp, her coppery hair illuminated by the light above them, and Mulder notices then that his partner is beautiful. He's noticed before, of course, but it's impossible not to notice now, and it's probably just because he's drunk, but he can't help but notice now. She's very beautiful.

“I'm fine,” he says. “Healing up well.”

“Good.” She pats his chest with satisfaction and starts to turn away, but a group of people come out of the bar all at once, knocking Scully back into him. He steadies her with a hand on her waist, and by the time she's looking up at him and muttering an apology, he's already leaned down and kissed her. Or maybe she rises up and kisses him. He doesn't know. He doesn't remember how it ends, either; all he knows is that they got into their respective cabs and went home. But there are three things that he knows for sure. The first is that she kissed him back. The second is that he doesn't feel nearly as guilty or embarrassed about it as he should. And the third that neither of them violate these unspoken rules they have in place; neither of them mention it again.

 

**iv.**

She feels bad about pointing her gun at him.

This is the kind of tense situation that those survival movies she likes to watch always portray, but she never thought she'd be _in_ one. Snowed into a facility in remote Alaska with three people she isn't sure she can trust, and one of them is her partner? Ridiculous. And the worst part is not being able to rely on Mulder to have her back. If things get dire, if the infection spreads, she could have to fight for her life. She could lose her mind. She could do a lot worse to Mulder than just point her gun at him.

She believed Mulder when he said he didn't kill Murphy, or at least she wanted to. She doesn't trust Hodge much more than she doesn't trust Mulder, but he was only escalating the situation and that was all she could see to do. She feels awful, though, nervous of what Mulder thinks to her. If they get out of this alive, he could report her, back in DC; she knows this isn't standard protocol. And besides that, she's ruined something that she can't quite put into words. _For God's sake, it's me!_ he'd said, like there had been some kind of bond formed between them, like that was supposed to mean something. And it _did._ He was her partner and they had been through a lot together. It should've meant something, but she didn't know if he was the Mulder she'd been getting to know over the past eight months. She didn't want to doubt him, but she did, and she hated that she had to. She hates this case.

As soon as they figure out how to cure the infected, she goes to talk to Mulder. Hodge and DaSilva try to talk her out of it, but she stands her ground. “If anything happens, you come inside,” she says firmly. “I can't do this to him until I'm sure.”

She pulls the door open and finds Mulder sitting on the floor in the dark. He scrambles to his feet when the light falls across the floor. “It's just you?” he asks.

“Yes,” she says. She turns on the swinging lightbulb as the door slams shut.

“It's one of them,” Mulder insists, squinting into the light.

“No one's been killed since you've been in here,” she says. Thank God.

“So?” he responds, stubbornly.

They stand in silence for a few seconds, looking at each other. Scully takes a breath before speaking. “We found a way to kill it. Two worms in one host will kill each other.”

Mulder is quiet for a minute before replying gravely. “You give me one worm,” he says, “you'll infect me.”

“If that's true,” she whispers, drawing closer so that the others cannot hear if they are listening in, “then why didn't you let us inspect you?”

“I would have but you pulled a gun on me,” he hisses angrily, drawing even closer so that their faces are close. She swallows. “Now I don't trust them,” he whispers, pauses before adding, somewhat more sincerely, “I _want_ to trust you.”

Her heart thudding in her ribs, her mind racing. If he trusts her, then they have a chance. “Okay,” she whispers back in a furious hiss. “But now they're not here.”

They stare at each other for a few beats, nose to nose like they have been so many times before. She swallows. And then Mulder is turning away, tugging at his shirt so she can expect his neck.

She hesitates for only a second before pulling down his collar, running her hand over his spine, smoothing her thumb over his soft skin. Nothing writhing under the surface. He's fine.

He turns around so fast that it's almost startlingly, as soon as she lets go of his collar. She ducks her head, smiling a little with relief and embarrassment, and turns to leave, but she only makes it a few steps before his hands are closing down on her shoulders and tugging her backwards. She gasps on instinct, fear clenching her chest like a vice, and starts to turn around, but he puts a comforting hand against the side of her face. Reassuring her. He's checking her to see if she is infected.

She can see the logic in this, so she faces front again as he pulls down her collar and puts his hand against the back of her neck. His palms are warm and callused and large. She swallows as his fingers slide over her upper back. Did it feel this way when she checked him? She can feel his touch in every part of her body.

His fingers linger on her skin a little longer than necessary, his thumb against the back of her neck where her pulse throbs. “It's not you,” he says hoarsely. “And it's not me.”

She turns quickly, the same way he had before, and he stumbles a little, his hand not moving from its position against the side of her head. It lands against her jaw as she moves. “It’s you,” she says without thinking, and a bit of surprise flickers across his face. She shakes her head. “Not like that, Mulder, but… you're you. You're still _you_.”

_It's you, and I still know you, and that doesn't make everything we've been through void and unmeaningful,_ she wants to say, but she doesn't know how to put this into words, how important their partnership has become to her without her even knowing it, so instead she moves forward. She thinks she was intending to hug him, but when she moves forward, she is kissing him before she knows it. He makes a small sound into her mouth and wraps an arm around her waist, moves his hand from her jaw to her hair to the back of her neck. His fingers brushing her spine makes her shudder, makes her wrap her arms hard around his neck. They haven't done this in months, not since September, and before not since the summer, and the first time in the spring, and they never talk about it, they have never fucking talked about it, and how the hell did this become such a habit? Mulder scoops her up, lifting her so that she is above him, and she clings to him, kissing him hard, his mouth falling open under hers and her legs around his waist, and she doesn't know how they're ever going to go without talking about this, it's him, it's him, it's _him_ …

He pulls away first, his fingers tangled in her hair, panting a little. “Scully,” he mumbles. “Scully, we should go out. It's one of them, we have to figure out who and cure them so we can get out of here.”

“Oh,” Scully says dumbly, slipping to the ground as he loosens her hold on her. “Y-yes, of course.”

He pushes some wayward hairs behind her ears, not ungently, before pulling away. Scully steadies her breathing, stepping away and turning towards the door. “We should remember to stay calm,” she says firmly. She wonders if Hodge and DaSilva have been listening this whole time, and her face flushes red. “If we stay calm, they'll stay calm. And this will all be over soon.”

“Right,” Mulder says, and his hand brushes over her shoulder. She shivers again, straightens her shirt. They walk out of the closet together.

\---

DaSilva is the infected, and they cure her. Mulder wants to go back and investigate further, but Hodge informs them that the place has been torched. He's disappointed, but Scully is relieved. “Leave it there,” she tells him, because she never wants to go through that again. Mulder gets quiet after that, sullen and pouting on the plane ride home, and she remembers that this is what caused an argument before. They don't talk a lot on the first leg of their flight. Mulder sleeps through the second leg. They don't talk about the kiss in the closet, or repeat it. As per usual. It never happened if no one else saw it and neither of them ever mentions it.

Scully tells herself that it's better this way. Entering any kind of romantic relationship will mess up their partnership, and she doesn't want to risk that. It's horribly unprofessional. It's better this way. It really is.

 

**v.**

She isn't jealous when his ex-girlfriend shows up. She isn't. But watching them together, when Phoebe kisses him passionately after their bomb scare, she can only remember the feeling of his mouth on hers.  

\---

She almost goes to him after her father dies. She's lost in grief and uncertainty, after what she saw the night her father died, and she wants to focus her attention on something else, forget it all for a while. Mulder had seemed like the best option. But she'd stopped herself, crying in her kitchen with Kleenex crumpled in her fist. Convinced herself that she doesn't need a one-night stand to distract herself. She needs Mulder, but not in the way she'd told herself she did. She needs to work.

She goes to the office and then to Raleigh, intending to bury herself in a case and forget about everything, but she finds herself unable to. On one hand, Boggs the acclaimed psychic is manipulating her with her father (although she doesn't know _how,_ how he could be doing this, because it's impossible, she doesn't believe…). And on the other, Mulder is there, trying to comfort her, protect her. He touches her face. He tries to keep her from putting herself in danger. He calls her by her first name.

\---

The gunshot explodes, and when she looks up, she can see him falling. She cries out his name and runs to his side, almost without thinking.

He's lying on his back, stunned; she crouches beside his head, surveys him, looking for the wound. It's in his thigh, the blood black in the dim light, and she can see that it is an area that could be fatal if he doesn't get attention. “We need an ambulance!” she shouts, because they need help, right away, it's Mulder. “Officer down!”

_He's cold,_ she thinks, he must be cold, it's December and they're by the water. She unzips her jacket and rounds his body to cover him with it. She's in the midst of adjusting it when she sees it: the blood smeared on the white cross. Just like Boggs said.

Her mouth hangs open for a minute in total and utter shock before she remembers that Mulder is hurt. She can't dwell on the fact that Boggs knew and warned them because Mulder is hurt. She turns to him, whispers fiercely, “Mulder, you're going to be okay,” because he is, he has to be.

He doesn't answer. His eyes are only half open, his head rocking back and forth on the ground. He's losing blood at a rapid pace. She presses her hands hard over the wound to staunch the flow, praying the bullet didn't sever a major artery. _Please,_ she thinks, and she's praying, Mulder's blood warm as it seeps through her fingers, _please, God_. She can't lose someone else. First her father and then her partner, and she can't lose anyone else. She presses down harder on the wound, and Mulder grunts with pain, his eyes glassy.

“It's okay,” she says softly, her voice shaking. “You're gonna be okay. I've got you.” She keeps the weight on the wound, but she leans forward on an impulse and kisses him on the forehead gently. If he dies, she wants to have done that first.

Sirens echo in the distance. Mulder bleeds. A tear drips down Scully's face. She is going to kill Luther Lee Boggs if he dies, but he won't die, he _won't_ die.

She holds his hand clumsily in the ambulance because she doesn't know what else to do. He is her partner.

 

**vi.**

Scully spends New Year's Eve in Mulder's hospital room. There’s a pathetic TV in Mulder’s room and they watch the ball drop in Times Square on it. Mulder’s on pain medications, which make him goofier; he counts along with the spectators in Times Square with a glazed-over look in his eyes. Scully watches in silence, hands knotting in her lap. She’s had plenty of good New Year’s Eve memories to stock up over the year—she spent the last one with Ethan, tipsy from champagne and giggling hysterically when he kissed her, teeth bumping together—but the only one she can think of now is the first year she was allowed to stay up til midnight, at nine. (She and Missy had snuck out on the back porch minutes away from midnight and sat on the step, watching the stars. She’d tipped her head up to the sky, mittened hands pressing into her knees when she felt the pressure of her father’s hand on her head and turned to look at him. “It’s a new year now, Starbuck,” he’d told her seriously. “It’s your chance to start over, to make your life whatever you want it to be.”) Scully blinks hard to stop the onslaught of tears and reaches for the tissues she’d crumpled in her pocket.

“Hey, Scully,” Mulder says, touching her wrist. “Scully. Are you okay? Are you sad again?”

_He’s high as a kite,_ Scully thinks wryly. “I’m fine,” she says, scraping her fingertips under her eyes. Maybe she should take some time off with Mulder after this case, give herself some time to recover so she won’t be crying all over the place every case. “I just… memories. You know how it is.” And with his sister, he must know.

Mulder rests his head against her shoulder. “It’s 1994,” he slurs into her jacket. “Anything can happen now, Scully; make a wish.”

“I’m pretty sure you’ve got the wrong holiday,” she tells him.

He points to the TV where a couple is kissing, confetti falling down on them like rain. “We should do that,” he says, raising his head to look at her. “In honor of the New Year.”

Scully's eyes shift to the screen where the couple is kissing passionately, _Auld Lang Syne_ playing gently in the background. He almost died. He could've died, in a condemned warehouse in North Carolina, and she would've only gotten to know him for nine months. She told him the truth at the hotel, she loves this job. Loves working with him. She doesn't know what she would've done if he'd died.

“Okay,” she says softly, looking back at him.

He blinks slowly, like he hadn't expected her to say that. “Okay?” he repeats dumbly.

She smiles at him, leans closer and kisses him gently. Not drunkenly, not desperately, not on accident. Well, he is high on pain meds, but still. This feels different. It might be the same as every other time they've done this, but it feels different. Maybe it's because it's New Year's, and it's corny as hell. She cups the back of his head, curls her fingers into his soft hair. He kisses her back sloppily but sweetly, their noses crushed together. She smiles at him when she pulls away. Her partner is alive. They solved the case. She's feeling impulsive and she's happy not to be alone tonight.

“Happy New Year, Scully,” he says fuzzily but happily, wraps his arms around her neck.

She rests her chin on his shoulder, her hands against his waist. His face is turned into her hair and he snuffles into it. “Happy New Year, Mulder,” she says.

\---

In the morning, Mulder wakes up with Scully's head on the side of the mattress, drooling a little, her hair a mess. He blinks muzzily a few times, trying to remember everything from last night and only coming up with kissing at midnight. “Scully,” he mumbles, touching the top of her tangled hair.

“Hmm,” she mutters groggily. “Whas goin on?”

“You're asleep on the side of my hospital bed,” says Mulder. “You probably have a huge crick in your back by now.”

“Mmm.” She sits up, pushing hair out of her face. “How are you feeling?”

His leg is sore as shit, and he could use some more painkillers, but he lies and says, “Fine.” Scully nods a little bit, mouth turning up briefly at the corner before she looks away, rubbing at her back and smoothing her rumpled hair.

Mulder breaks the one unspoken rule they've always had between them and says, “Did we kiss last night?” Scully looks up quickly, caught off guard, and he clarifies, “You know… for New Year's?”

“We did,” Scully says to her knees. “For New Year's.”

“Ahhh, for New Year's.” He reaches down off the side of the bed and takes her hand, on a impulse. She looks up again with that same surprise, but she doesn't take her hand away. She squeezes his hand.

“Thank you,” she says softly.

Mulder winces a little, reaching over to press the call button with his free hand because he really does need some pain meds. “For what?” he asks, because he can't think of one single thing he's done that has benefited her in the last week. Bringing her along on this case right after her father died, what was he thinking? She decided to come along, but he should've talked her out of it, should've predicted that Boggs would get her under his thumb.

She shakes her head in an almost stubborn matter. Like she herself doesn't even know why she's thanking him. “Just… thank you.”

He leans over and kisses the side of her head, which is really breaking every single rule but he doesn't particularly care. He remembers the fuzzy moments after he was shot, when Scully kissed his forehead and told him he was gonna be okay. He's glad she was with him. _I'm afraid to believe,_ she had told him before. He used her first name in an attempt to let her know that he is with her, that he cares about her. He's broken the rules and he doesn't care. He doesn't know what else to do.

He holds his partner's hand and smiles a little at the mattress. He doesn't care. This is enough.

\---

He kisses her in their office three weeks later, sober and on purpose. And she kisses him back, crumpling his trench coat between her fingers. And neither of them pretend that it didn't happen this time.


End file.
